Ever since I became aware of the world around me, I realized it was filthy — so I decided to become filthy too.
I killed. I deceived. I plundered and I stole. I did everything you could possibly imagine.
But I never anticipated that divine punishment would come for me in this particular way.
Where am I right now?
Why am I suspended in this void?
The last thing I remember... I was raping a beautiful girl after I had killed her father right before her eyes.
How did I end up here...?
Yes — I remember now. I felt something sharp pierce through me from behind.
Yes.
Yes.
Her mother.
That bitch — I never imagined she would return home.
What rotten luck I have.
But why this remorse? Why is my heart still beating?
I always knew I'd die someday because of what I'd done. I always knew it.
Yes. I was evil.
Why are you looking at me like that?
I'm not the only monster in this world.
My father was evil too — a deranged, broken man who tortured me every single night without mercy. He killed my mother right in front of my eyes.
And in that very moment, as she lay dying, my mother told me she wished she had never given birth to me in the first place.
The strange thing is — my father laughed. A hysterical, unhinged laughter as he stared at me while I wept. I never understood why he killed her. Was it because she hadn't brought home enough money that day? Or was he simply too drunk to comprehend what he was doing?
The world was cruel to me. Unimaginably cruel.
So don't you dare look down on me for what I became.
I remember one particular dark night with perfect clarity.
I fled. From that house — or rather, from that living hell I was forced to call home. I ran while secretly wishing death would find me along the way.
Instead, I was abducted.
By a deranged, twisted stranger who took pleasure in raping young boys and violating them every night while inflicting the most excruciating pain imaginable.
Truly, I am a man cursed by fate.
That lunatic owned a ring on his finger — engraved with a strange, foreign symbol. One day, when I dared to ask him about it, he told me he'd found it near the site where a meteorite had fallen. He said with unmistakable pride that he would never give that ring to another living soul — that it would be buried with him when he died.
Every day he tortured me. Every day he violated me.
Until the day I killed him.
In the worst possible way.
I slipped a sedative into his glass of wine — not the kind that renders you unconscious, but the kind that paralyzes you completely. You remain entirely aware. You can see, you can feel everything happening around you, but you cannot move a single muscle. A living statue. A prisoner inside your own flesh.
How I savored every moment.
I carved off his manhood with a blade, right before his wide, horror-filled eyes. Then I severed his fingers — one by one — to claim the ring that refused to budge no matter how hard I pulled. I had no choice but to shatter the finger entirely.
I dragged my tongue across the ring in a slow, deliberate, terrifying gesture while he watched, helpless and dying. Then I slid it onto my own hand.
It fit perfectly. As though it had always been made for me.
I didn't dwell on it then. After all, I was killing someone for the very first time.
I leaned close to that broken wretch and whispered that the ring had abandoned him — that he would be buried alone, without a single soul to mourn him.
Just like me.
Then I killed him.
I drove the knife into him more than ninety-nine times.
After that, I killed many others. So many I lost count. I killed to survive. I killed for food. Until killing became my pleasure — my craft — the one talent I wore like a badge of honor.
I no longer remember how many have died at my hands.
I no longer remember their names.
Much like I no longer remember my own.
What continued to astonish me, however, was the ring.
I tried countless times to remove it. I never could, no matter how hard I tried. So eventually — I stopped trying.
I accepted it.
At fifteen years old, I joined a gang.
A child who killed, who stole, who witnessed everything that should never be witnessed by innocent eyes.
So I was no longer a child. I had become a beast — and I tore apart everything and everyone that stood in my path.
They gave me a name: The Joker.
I never understood why, but I loved it. I adored it. I made it the only name I owned — and anyone who refused to call me by it... I killed them.
The older I grew, the more people trembled at the mere sound of my name. Legions I had personally sent screaming into hell.
Today, I am the undisputed leader of the largest criminal organization in the world.
In truth — I am the one who controls the world.
We do everything. We kill. We plunder. We take women by force. We steal. The police fear us. Governments fear us. My name now carries more power than the darkest magic ever could.
But I had one very bad habit.
I loved to personally punish anyone who dared defy my orders. I would torture them slowly — then end them.
On that cursed night, something felt different. I could sense it. Something had shifted in the very air around me — a strange, creeping sensation, as though invisible fingers were toying with the edges of my mind.
Was it death? Or something else entirely?
Then I saw her.
A beautiful girl who walked into our headquarters. She was the daughter of my third-in-command. The moment my eyes landed on her, the hunger was immediate and absolute.
Her skin was white as ivory. Her hair — long, black as a raven's wing. Her eyes were blue. Blue like the open ocean on a windless night.
But I had never been a man who simply took without asking first.
I am a gentleman, after all.
Ha.
So after she left, I rose from my chair and walked to my dear lieutenant with the widest, most unsettling smile I owned, and I said to him simply:
"I want your daughter for one night. Just one."
The fool's face crumbled. He dropped to his knees like a pathetic broken thing, seized my foot with trembling hands, tears streaming violently down his face as he begged:
"I... I beg you... J-Joker... please... she's still young..."
In that moment, a single thought passed through my mind:
"You are spectacularly stupid. If you feared for her this desperately, why did you ever let her set foot in the wolf's den?"
I never ask twice.
So I said nothing more. I simply told him to go home.
And after he left — I picked up my gun, got in the car, and paid him an unexpected visit.
I do so love surprises.
He opened the door and found me standing there. The shock alone nearly killed him before the bullet did — he collapsed to the ground at the mere sight of me.
I raised the gun to his skull and told him to call his daughter.
If only the fool had listened. He would have lived. But he said nothing. He gave me silence.
So I let my gun speak on his behalf.
The bullet tore through his skull. Idiot. The blood soaked my new clothes, but I didn't care.
I love blood.
The girl came running at the sound of the shot — and when she saw her father crumpled on the floor, a bullet lodged in his head, she simply... sat down. Right there on the ground. Weeping in shock, too shattered to scream, too broken to fight.
I walked toward her with slow, measured steps.
And I took what I came for.
She didn't resist. She didn't struggle. The shock had consumed her entirely — she seemed to believe it was nothing more than a nightmare. An illusion. Something that couldn't possibly be real.
I don't know where I made my mistake.
Did I leave the door open behind me? Did I let her distract me so completely that I forgot to watch my surroundings?
It doesn't matter now.
I am dead.
There is nothing left to do.
Where am I?
Why is everything around me absolute darkness?
Why am I wearing white robes?
Where are my clothes? And why is this damned ring still on my finger?
And why — why — is it glowing like that?
Am I going to Hell?
I suppose I deserve Hell.
But if my life had been just a little different...
Just a little. I don't ask for much.
If only my mother had loved me...
If only my father had been a decent man who treated me with the smallest shred of kindness...
If I had never run away. If I had never had to kill the man who violated me...
I think everything would have been different.
I would be sitting in my own office right now. My wife waiting for me at home. Her and my son.
Are these... tears?
No.
No.
I am not crying.
I am not weak.
It was life that forced me to become the villain of this story.
And in that very moment — words materialized before my eyes.
I stared at them. Stunned.
What was this light? What were these words?
"SECOND CHANCE"
"ANOTHER WORLD"
They floated before me like a choice I was meant to make, each sentence accompanied by a faint description beneath it:
Second Chance: Reclaim your life from the very beginning.
Another World: Travel to a world unlike your own.
I've completely lost my mind. What am I seeing? What is this madness?
I decided to do nothing. I kept moving through the darkness, searching desperately for any source of light.
But there was none.
An hour passed.
The words never disappeared.
So I made my choice — just to see what would happen.
I didn't need long to decide. From the very first second, I already knew.
Another World.
I would not reclaim that miserable life of mine. I'm not a fool.
I reached out and tried to press the words — "Another World" — but my hand passed through nothing but empty air.
What kind of madness is this?
I paused for a moment, and instead of reaching — I simply thought it.
Another World.
In that instant, the words dissolved.
And from deep within the darkness, a tremendous light erupted.
I ran toward it — desperate, breathless, clinging to the fragile hope that it was a way out of the endless dark surrounding me.
But as I drew close —
Everything went black.